Tuesday, February 25, 2014

My pregnancy....the begining of a new life.

As a kid, I always knew I wanted to be a mom someday. Of course, everyone wants to have a child when "the time is right", when you live in a nice home, have money to spare, and everything is hunky dory. I am a bit of a realist and I knew that isnt how things would go. Just looking at the world around me, I knew better.

When I became pregnant in November of 2011, I was living in a rented house with my husband and stepson. Life was a bit bumpy at that time. Money was tight, and there were many family frustrations. Sacha (my sister) had died in August of 2011 so we were all trying to figure out our own path through grief.

The morning I found out I was pregnant, December 2nd at 3am to be exact, my mind was racing. I had assumed I was for about a week already just because of some nagging feeling in my head. I made the decision to keep my secret for a few weeks and to surprise Jason with the news on Christmas Eve. Talk about a hard secret to keep! I, of course, shared the news with a friend who I had promised I would tell first whenever the time came. She was thrilled I kept my promise. But telling just one person about a life changing event? Thats tough!

Jason, of course, was happy with the news. Slowly we told other family and friends. My pregnancy progressed nicely. I had some swelling that kicked in about half way through, and wound up with gestational diabetes needing insulin injections every night at around 32 weeks. But otherwise, I was able to stay active until the heat wave of that summer hit in early June. 90s+ for weeks! It was crazy.

When planning for Sydney's birth, I had a list of baby names hanging over my desk that I was constantly adding to. Although, "Sydney" was one of the first girls name I wrote down, and it just seemed so right. We chose to find out the sex of our little peanut, and kept that a secret until after my baby shower in June. Then I decided to give our little girl my sisters name for her middle name. I was sure Sacha would be watching over her, like she does with my twin nephews.

Due to my diabetes, that gave my pregnancy the title of "high risk". My doctor was incredible every step of the way. He and I talked candidly about things. And I knew I would be induced no later than my due date so there would not be any issues with babys size. Sometimes with diabetes, a baby can be quite large and moms sugars and blood pressures can be affected.

I was induced on the morning of my due date, Aug 28th. Dr. Gonzalez gave me 3 rounds of induction medication called Misoprostol. That took 9-10 hours. During that time, my blood pressure started creeping up, while the medication was not successfully dialating me. After a long day of waiting around, the decision was made at 7:30pm to do a c-section. I was excited. I was, of course, ready to go through natural labor, but having a c-section had always been in the back of my mind and I felt pretty prepared.

I was given an IV, a catheter, and prepped for surgery very quickly. And by 8:40pm Sydney was born. I will never forget that experience, the doctor and anesthesiologist involved, and the look on Jason's face as he watched. I had to wait about 30 minutes to hold her for the first time since I had to be stitched up. But it was nice knowing Sydney would be meeting my parents and best friend right away.

As I was wheeled down the hall back to my hospital room, I knew my life would never be the same. And I am so thankful to be able to be a mommy, and give my nephews a cousin, my brother, his wife and my brother-in-law a niece, and my parents another grandchild.